The first offset printing pressInvented in 1903 by Ira Washington Rubel, this is the very first offset printing press. It was operated in Rubel's New York plant for a year before it was sold to the Union Lithographic Company of San Francisco for $5,000. After it had been shipped out to California, the press waited out the San Francisco earthquake and fire on a wharf in nearby Oakland. Finally, it was put to work in 1907. The Rubel offset press marked the beginning of a new generation of lithographic printing presses that, in time, became the dominant printing process.